Three coordinated scientific conferences, cllectively entitled, "The Scientific Basis for the Public Health Control of Environmental Hazards" will be held form 6/21-30/78. The individual conferences are "Health Effects of Asbestos Exposure", "Health Effects of Halogenated Aromatic Hydrocarbons", and "Public Health Control of Environmental Hazards". This format will provide an opportunity to examine and discuss a complex problem: Scientists are able, with increasing sophistication, to evaluate the hazards to health associated with, for example, the mining and quarrying of asbestos and asbestos-containing materials, the processing and fabrication of industrial and consumer materials containing asbestos and the eventual disposal of such materials. But, at the same time, they share with society at large an inadequate understanding of how to make the regulatory decisions that would effectively deal with the risks and benefits that accompany the use of materials that both fulfill a social need and, at the same time, pose a real threat to the health of the worker at the site of production as well as to the customer at large. The societal control of environmental hazards is the central theme of this coordinated series of conferences. The Conference on "Health Effects of Asbestos Exposure" will examine new material in this area and will emphasize the identification and evaluation of asbestos hazards, with a view to their more successful and systematic control. At the same time the asbestos conference will dovetail with the conference entitled "The Public Health Control of Environmental Hazards" by serving as a prototypical example of the problems confronting our scientists and citizens at large when they attempt to deal with the control of environmental hazards.